Submitting your own news kind of defeats the purpose of coming to a site to read news

Not completely - if you'd submit just 1 thing per week, and if just few dozen people did that...

If this was SpaceNews Thom would write about how NASA is waisting money, how the Mars Rovers aren't innovative and people would comment that warp drives were already invented in the 60's. Probably true, intesting, important, but we want to see black holes, Mars panoramas and chat with Voyager 2.

Well, they did waste a lot over the decades, pursuing some misplaced fantasies - the STS was one enormous scam, achieving practically nothing as advertised, and sucking out the funds. Not only NASA ones - it also made the stupid Soviet generals to desire "parity" for non-existent "strategic advantage" of STS.
(but it did look awesome, in spirit of http://www.osnews.com/permalink?523521 & kinda like "spaceplanes" in the scifi of ~40s, during rapid advances of airplane tech; hm, I think I can see a pattern: goo.gl pic in that link is from the times of rapid advances in marine tech)

If not for that, we'd probably at least have a constant stream of Lunokhods (and, later, planetary rovers; semi-mass-production - it's less about innovative, more about refinement and sustainable approach, no crazy crash projects); maybe a small moon base, too (but not warp / magic carpet fantasy... http://www.osnews.com/permalink?523694 )